Swine flu black humour

Ya gotta laugh. No, really ...



Miss Piggy Dies of Swine Flu

Miss Piggy, actress and star of television, stage, and screen, has become the first celebrity victim of the Swine Flu Epidemic. The 39 year old actress passed away at Hollywood Hills Hospital surrounded by family, friends, and a representative from Peyton's Meat Packing Plant.

Read on ...

What they told us last time ...



'Ole reliable

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
Snoutbreak '09 - The Last 100 Days
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	M - Th 11p / 10c
The Last 100 Days
thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Economic Crisis Political Humor

This is pretty amusing too

Notes

Barry in Hawaii.

When Barry visited London, Cameron gave him a box of CDs including albums by the Smiths, Radiohead and Lily Allen. Er, this is not Obama's taste. (Head. Hands ... )

Interesting ... The BBC's crap US election coverage last week had Hillary Clinton atop its list of possible 'Obama running mates'. Now it's flipped to Joe Biden atop and Hillary a-bottom.

Shameless.

As you may have noticed I'm a bit interested in the US election. So the coming week in Denver at the Democrat national convention has especially drawn my interest, in particular what Hillary and her fans will do. Maureen Dowd thinks she'll shit stir and I think she may be right - given that she's yet to slap down her more rabid supporters, aka PUMAs ('party unity, my ass'), and despite them being very few in number and turning into a Roveite Republican black-op.

The reason she lost has been analysed and the internal memos leaked: it was an incredibly badly run campaign.

Dowd's killer quote:

“A woman who wildly mismanages and bankrupts a quarter-of-a-billion-dollar campaign operation, and then blames sexism in society, will dampen the dreams of our daughters.”

Biden has a mouth on him. See Huffpost's video highlights.

According to this article in Africa Confidential, most of the Mugabe regime's ill-gotten gains are being ferreted out of Zimbabwe via UK and South African banks, ending up in either Malaysia or China.

It is this outflow of capital that is more than anything else destroying Zimbabwe's economy. Zimbabwe's capital exporters have intensified their operations as political and economic conditions have deteriorated, promoting a cycle of decline.

Regarding the talks, Zimbabweans have just 'a small measure of weariness and a massive dose of wariness'

Meanwhile, Mugabe's supporters latest tactic is poisoning.

In Haiti people are eating mud cakes.

Israeli civic organisation B'tselem has been giving out camcorders to people in the West Bank to record attacks by settlers and the IDF. Says more than a thousand words and some have already had play on Israeli TV with subsequent slaps on the wrist to soldiers shooting people in the foot and the like.

Here's one. 'Settlers attack shepherds in Southern Hebron Hills'.



Salon's Glenn Greenwald has been the best source on the really odd story about the so-called anthrax attacker. This is ongoing.

UPDATE: Nature, the preeminent journal of science, has an Editorial today (headlined: "Case Not Closed") echoing Sen. Grassley's demand for "a full congressional or independent enquiry into this case"; arguing that "the absence of such a full disclosure can only feed suspicions that the FBI has again targeted an innocent man in this case";

How much public money is a gold medal worth?

In Beijing, each gold medal has cost Australia at least $50 million, says Kevin Norton, a professor of exercise science at the University of South Australia. Or, to put it another way, $12 million came out of the public purse for each medal of any colour. Now we're told these sums are a pittance compared with what is needed to maintain our ranking in London.

What is it with Liverpool? The only big UK city not to host a gay pride and, says, one councillor "homophobia is endemic". This comes in the wake of a underreported killing of a gay teen where the killers got bail.

This story perked me up. I'm out of touch with the state of HIV drugs but according to The Indie cocktails are such now that takers can expect something approaching a normal life expectancy. This isn't everyone and like many of my generation who lived through the worst I fear for the young who are seroconverting in record numbers. But this is progress.

Aw yeah. We can destroy the world and we can be funky whilst doing it!



Quote of the moment:

'It is one thing, and a good thing, to arrest the man, Karadzic,' [Fikret Alic] says. 'He was the big war criminal, the man with the idea for all that happened. But it is another thing to arrest the idea. Karadzic's ideas live on in the existence of Republika Srpska, and if this is all about joining the European Union, for the Republika Srpska to join the EU would be like Europe admitting a part of Germany that still agreed with Hitler, just because it is in Europe. I have rebuilt the house you are staying in now, but in 1992 it was burned while my grandmother was inside - she is one of the 3,205 people still missing - and I was taken to Omarska. No one has ever said sorry for what they did, no one has ever helped us to return and the authorities oppose outright any monument in Omarska to what they did.'

And on a much lighter note when asked 'How do you relax?' sez Dizee Rascal 'A blow job relaxes me'.

The Condoms Of Champions

A Chinese rubber maker called Elasun 'feels the spirit':





Great idea, but good for the gays?

Unnatural

We're doomed I say, doomed ...

"[Pringles] has a shape not found in nature, being designed and manufactured for stacking, and giving a pleasing and regular undulating appearance which permits comfortable eating."

Potato based content = 42%

Less taxes for us them!

... I draw attention to various George Monbiot columns about the DOOMED nature of us westerners carrying on like this ... as well as the results of eating their 'low-fat' variety (think Olestra, think "anal leakage") ...

Health sites and memories

A friend pinged with with info about a patient community website he'd just found; Patients Like Me.

He'd found it very useful to exchange experiences and information with those with his condition. I had a look around the site and found thriving communities, including one for HIV/AIDS.

This took me right back to two decades ago (gulp) when the first internet responses to AIDS appeared. In the early 90s I edited a magazine which needed the latest research information. This, literally, came off the boat, so was several months old. So when I encountered the net it was with astonishment that all this info was there and brand new!

The info was pure text and basically a fairly unusable, certainly unsearchable, database interface. But it was astonishing.

What I was looking at was the AIDS Education Global Information System (AEGiS), which is now the world's largest Database of AIDS information. (The only resource larger is the U.S. National Library of Medicine, but it only offers some of its information on a website).

Since 1992, AEGiS has sought out scientific abstracts from local, regional and international AIDS conferences, related news, reports, and journal articles and compiled them a fully-indexed, cross-referenced and keywords searchable database.

The site is deliberately light on visuals that would make it difficult to access for those with slower computers.

It was originally started as a small electronic bulletin board system (BBS) by Jamie Jemison in 1986. Sister Mary Elizabeth Clark, a transsexual pioneer, and US Navy/US Army veteran took it over in 1990, inspired by meeting an isolated young man with AIDS in rural Missouri. Under her direction and tireless effort, the database grew and grew.

She worked 18-hour days from the living room of the mobile home she shared with her aging parents. It sits just across San Juan Creek near LA from the new 1,700-square-foot office, which Clark's 93-year-old father, Ed, happened upon and recommended for AEGiS just months before he died. They moved into that office only a few years ago.

AEGiS is nowadays funded by the US National Library of Medicine, Elton John AIDS Foundation, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol-Myers Squibb, John M Lloyd Foundation, Roche / Trimeris, and the Bridgestone/Firestone Trust.

Sister Clark is one of my heroes, a real web pioneer and a true inspiration.

She's received many awards including the 'Award of Courage' from the American Foundation for AIDS Research, and the Human Rights Award from the International Assn. of Physicians in AIDS Care. AEGiS was nominated for U.N. honors in 1999, 2001 and 2003.

Another hero and inspiration is epidemiologist Elizabeth Pisani.

HIV/AIDS work is very political, including in affected communities, and that slants priorities and funding.

A good example would be the lack of promotion for many years of a 'negative' status for gay men - it was seen as somehow undermining HIV+ gay men. I suffered a lot of grief for that view when I worked in the area.

Pisani talks a lot of sense on these sorts of topics:

The problem, Pisani says, is that 80% of the Pepfar (Bush's AIDS initiative) budget goes on treatment. "Pepfar says great, we've got 1.8 million people in treatment. And next year it will be another 1.8 million! That will mean 3.6 million people. It's exponential - and that's the biggest question mark over the entire approach to Africa. The more treatment you have, the more infection you get."

ARVs [antiretroviral drugs] reduce people's viral load, she agrees, making them less likely to infect someone else - as long as they don't miss a single dose. "But it also keeps them alive longer, and healthy enough to want to have sex. You only have to look at the experience of the UK or US gay communities where we've had more or less universal access to ARVs for at least eight or nine years, and the number of new infections are rising. More people are living longer with HIV, and there is what we call behavioural disinhibition: 'Fuck the condoms, I don't need them any more, because if he's positive he'll be on drugs, so he probably won't infect me. And if I do get infected, it would be annoying, but not the end of the world.'

"But having Aids is not a picnic. Yes, it's great that all this stuff on treatment is happening. But it becomes all the more urgent to have effective prevention. And that's not happening."

"Is not a picnic" is putting it mildly, you can expect to live around 25 years on ARVs. It makes me despair that so many young gay men are condemning themselves to shorter lives without a single clue that this is what they're doing by ignoring the condoms. Plus the government is cutting back on preventions spend.

Pisani did a few interviews in the UK last month for her brilliant book The Wisdom of Whores: Bureaucrats, Brothels, and the Business of AIDS.

On News24's HardTalk, professional dick Stephen Sackur spent a lot of time quizzing her about 'mafia connections'.

• You can watch the interview here (23 minutes, RealVideo)

By contrast Andrew Marr, was more interested and asked great questions.

Her blog is also called The Wisdom of Whores.

Google Reader clips catch up

Sneak preview of iplayer 2.0.

The most important change is that we combined TV and Radio in the same iPlayer interface.

Which will be great for introducing a lot of radio comedy to new audiences and entirely appropriate for the viewing circumstance - via computer or via mobile.

There's a stack of other great user-driven new features in it.

Elizabeth Pisani: Washington has more HIV than Nigeria

In part because Congress has until just a few months ago stood in the way of clean needles for injectors in the city, the capital of the world’s largest economy has HIV rates similar to those in many African countries.

Much web 2.0 isn't accessible but this looks set to rapidly change. Accesify reports that Firefox 3 is "a big accessibility enhancement in the form of WAI-ARIA (Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications) support."

And the RNIB’s Web Access Centre Blog says:

This is an exciting time in the browser area as support for the Web Accessibility Initiative - Accessible Rich Internet Applications (WAI-ARIA) suite gathers pace in the next generation of browsers. Browsers with support, partial support and planned support for WAI-ARIA include Internet Explorer 8, Firefox 3, Opera and Web Kit based browsers including Apple’s Safari.

Leading industry commentator John Battelle declares that with search It's Over. Google Wins.

MP Tom Harris got roasted in the MSM for comments on his blog and Minister and longtime blogger Tom Watson's points to hypocrisy and lack of MSM coverage of that hypocrisy by one of Harris' tormentors - Tory MP Philip Hammond.

If ever there was a time for British bloggers to pick up on a story that the mainstream press have missed/ignored, this is it.

Steve Dale artfully dismisses a CBI claim that Browsing websites costs billions in lost productivity.

I just hope that managers will not use this report as further ammunition to restrict workers from using the web for anything other than browsing their own company’s web site. Let’s not apply 19th century working practices to 21st century workers!

The BarCamp idea just happened in Nairobi!

• Wiki. Flickr.

Fantastic idea posted by Simon Dickson, The power of postcodes.

Postcodes are the country’s greatest example of the Power Of Information. I believe we would unlock significant power if we enshrined postcodes as our key national geography, asking Royal Mail to bequeath them to the nation. All statistical and political geography should be aligned with postcodes, with a commitment not to change them for 10 years, perhaps coinciding with the Census cycle. I don’t care if there are marginally more meaningful statistical boundaries; a flawed system we all understand beats a perfect system nobody understands. Oh, and it’s cheaper too.

Shane McCracken channeling Steve Webb posts that MPs are only just now being allowed to utilise laptops in HofC committee meetings.

Dave Briggs issues Three cheers for Dylan Jeffrey, a civil servant who took part in the debate about ICELE by commenting on his blog in Jeffrey's official capacity.

Of course, this week saw the publication of the guidance for civil servants engaging with the social web. Of the five main points, three were: be credible, be responsive and be a civil servant. Dylan hit all three of these.

Let’s hope other civil servants take note, and that Dylan’s colleagues at CLG thank him for doing this on their behalf.

The guidance has been the subject of much justified, excited comment within egov. It's genesis behind the scenes should be noted for some future history of this period. The actual movers here know who they are and deserve, unfortunately anonymous, thanks. The guidance just needs extending now beyond Whitehall!

John Edwards for CIO examines how new text analytics technology is being deployed in the US to examine customer comments on surveys and e-mail as well as monitor blogs, text messages, online chats, phone calls (through speech-to-text conversion) and social network profiles.

For content management products, Halper notes, text analytics can be a complementary technology; for example, text analytics can help categorize or enrich content, analyze content in a data repository, or improve workflow.

Also, vertical industries, such as the legal industry, are becoming increasingly intrigued by text analytics' ability to add insight to an array of routine business tasks, she says.

Today, many text analytics users believe that the technology provides a useful bridge to help nontechnical staff members get a handle on complex problems without running high-level searches.

"You can have business users who are not analysts really understand 'What are my top 10 problems?' or 'How is this issue trending over time?'" Bodoh says.

All new and early days though.

But while text analytics can rapidly generate vast amounts of deep customer insight, the technology is still far away from becoming an out-of-the-box solution.

"For our purposes, in order to get full value from the application, we will have to train analysts to use the software, invest in tuning the taxonomy to produce more granular analyses and integrate the output...with our enterprise data warehouse so we can use the combined data for even greater customer insight."

Emma Mulqueeny really likes Hazel Blears work on citizen empowerment.

* I can’t precis Ms Blears’ intro, you need to read it then come back for the rest if you need :)
* Bearing in mind that it is based on the GOB Green Paper, you need to know this bit of it: It aims to give citizens the means of participating in decision-making at every level; to clarify the role of Government, both at central and local level; to rebalance power between Parliament and government and give British people a stronger sense of what it means to be British (FWIW: I do not agree with the importance of the second point but hey ho)
* This paper is an action plan covering three areas:
1. Widening and deepening empowerment opportunities locally
2. Supporting and enabling people to take up empowerment opportunities
3. Strengthening local representative democracy
* In Summer 2008 there will be a review of this action plan, with a further plan set out thereafter (I know, I KNOW… these things take time)

One line which leapt out at me was:

Give citizens a greater role in planning
• Build an e-consultation hub: 2007 link every local authority and 2008 open the hub to the general public.

I wonder if this will replace, duplicate or actually means the much-loved, semi-privatised Planning Portal.

Another suicide follow up

I had a very moving comment to my post about the BMJ's article about search and suicide prevention.

Here it is:

Thank you for writing this article. I agree with you and believe that suicide should be a private matter and if someone wants to kill themselves they should be allowed to. Why do we force people to suffer in ways we would never allow a dog or cat suffer in. In any case they will, no matter what laws are out there and no matter how much society frowns on it. The difference is that without resources they may die painfully or fail and end up a vegetable.

I have a progressive neurological disorder. I live everyday in varying degrees of pain and have lost much of my abilities, despite taking time released pain med (because god forbid I should become addicted to my meds) because the amounts are not adequate.

Perhaps if people were able to get good pain control and the support they need they might not be looking at suicide. But many of us have little choice. I know that when my disease progresses to the point I can't take care of myself (and actually because of the laws that make it a crime to "assist" suicide, I'll have to do this before I reach that point) I am not sticking around. I refuse to end up in a nursing home where I have NO CONTROL over my own life and I will not be more of a burden to my husband then I already am. Again because of the stupid laws by these so called compassionate Christians I will be forced to die alone without my loved one who will have to establish an airtight alibi so they don't go to jail This just isn't right. I'm a disabled veteran and an adult. I should be able to end my life WHEN and HOW I want. The worst part is that you can't even talk with a mental health professional because they'll put you in the loony bin "to save you" because the only reason people kill themselves is because of depression (what a load of horse pucky). Maybe if it was safe to talk with someone people might go for help but since we know they will try and talk us out of it or will commit us we don't have that option. It would be nice to be able to talk with someone who has no stake in what is going to happen. Just to make sure you're thinking ok. But I'm rambling. Laws need to be changed so adults can make the decisions they need to make and can die at home comfortably surrounded by their loved ones. Think of how less scary death would be if children could see this natural end to life. And even adults might not have such a fear. I stayed with my father in law when he died at the hospital last year. It was peaceful and the way I'd like to go. He had his family around him, enough medications to make him comfortable and he seemed so happy to end the pain he had been in. I'd like to see laws created that would keep our rights intact and keep the government out of personal matters.

Because I lived through too many AIDS deaths I'm probably 'hardened' to these issues. I'm practical. I'm realistic. I'm not 'moral'. I knew people who topped themselves before they descended into hell/madness.

But as far as I'm concerned, yes, I didn't actually say in this article that I "believe that suicide should be a private matter and if someone wants to kill themselves they should be allowed to" (it was about search and 'suicide') but I do think that. My experience tells me that the alternatives are perverse and cruel.

Thank you to my commentator, 'Charlotte'.

NHS website - how much?!

I don't know what the NHS website costs but given their IT expenditure is in the multi-billions you would expect it's a lot. Maybe it's actually minimal. I don't know if this has bothered the Public Accounts Committee.

What I do know is that it appears to not contain any information about medical/doctor's certificates - those things which come in various flavours and require a visit to the GP. Definitely not 'a page' which contains 'the official info'.

Here's what happens when you type in 'certificates'.



Nowt of any use to anyone.

Actually another thing that happens is that a list of suggestions pop-up which are all about types of illness - obviously the site is geared around 'prevention'. This is pretty damn obvious from the homepage as well, as it yells 'FIVE A DAY MEALS ' at you.

The actual reason I was looking for 'certificates' was to provide information to people who needed to know something about the different types of them and what they meant. Y'know 'joined up government', 'do it online' and all that.

Plus it was people who were online anyway - looking at something I was attempting to link from - and in the particular case probably hadn't much clue about the way the system works. So, yes, talking to someone like a GP would help them but aren't we supposed to be saving government's money by doing more of the info provision online?

A fair bit of what the rest of government does is linked in some way to 'health'. Is this a case of dem silos? I would note that in my egov networking NHS people seem to be strangely absent ...

Postscript: turns out that info on medical certificates is on the DVLA website. Makes sense? Not.

Scrapbook clips catch up

My piece on 'Why Obama could be good for gays' has been republished by PinkNews, unfortunately the formatting fell through their template ;[

Arianna Huffington has been all over the UK media this week as she made a flying visit to London. I have been reading HuffPost since it started and am still waiting for it to do international news. It now has a green section and a 'living' section and, in London, much focus was on her move into local news.

The big, huge gap in American news reporting is international. It is very clear from reading HuffPost that even the liberals are plain ignorant. And why? Lack of decent reporting. It is pretty damming of Arianna's enterprise that she is putting local US news before developing a truly international section to her, now, very influential website — I just wish someone would say this to her and that didn't appear to happen on her flying visit.

One recent instance where HuffPost behaved badly was during the Burmese cyclone. They just reported and didn't link to donation sites — whereas the old school aka the New York Times did, and immediately.

Via Netimperative: Mobile advertising is the most unpopular ad format in the UK, according to new research from Dynamic Logic.

The study indicated that print advertising generates the most positive reaction with UK consumers and is seen as having the most relevance.

The Dynamic Logic ‘AdReaction’ study gauged consumer’s opinions of advertising.



Jonathan Zittrain interview on BBC News 24's Click.

His new book, The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, develops the theme about how the commercial world's platform dominance will spike the sorts of developments which we need to drive the Internet further. I have always been queasy about the odd attitudes towards corps like Apple and their closed, exclusive partnership relationships. Zittrain nails why and I have to read the book.

I think that Tim Berners-Lee would agree. In a speech last week he said:

"How can we make the Web be an infrastructure that allows more than one person to think more effectively than one person can? There's no proof yet that for creative thinking we've done that," he said. "The challenge is to build a system that allows the formation of half-formed ideas and allows collective creativity."

HT: nomensa

Age Concern is developing an online campaign to encourage people to become more organised.

Cancer Research UK has launched a blog to tackle cancer myths.

Barack Obama is mentioning Google a lot on the trail to contrast himself with McCain (who cannot use a computer at all).

The authoritative Pew Internet Project has released a report on the election campaign thus far and found:

• 46% of Americans have used the internet, email or cell phone text messaging to get news about the campaign, share their views and mobilize others.
• 35% of Americans say they have watched online political videos.
• 10% say they have used social networking sites such as Facebook or MySpace to gather information or become involved. This is particularly popular with younger voters: Two-thirds of internet users under the age of 30 have a social networking profile, and half of these use social networking sites to get or share information about politics or the campaigns.
  
• 6% of Americans have made political contributions online.
• 39% of online Americans have used the internet to access "unfiltered" campaign materials, which includes video of candidate debates, speeches and announcements, as well as position papers and speech transcripts.
  
• 5% of Americans have posted their own original commentary or analysis.
  

That's a lot.

One of the least reported aspect of the disaster that is Zimbabwe is the ecological crisis. This organization is trying to do something about it.

Shake hands with killers... Harare Tribune article on the history behind today's suffering.

At Zimbabwe's Independence then Prime Minister R. G. Mugabe established a government of apparent reconciliation including Zapu leader, Nkomo. The apparent integration of former warring combatants, Zanu's ZANLA and Zapu's ZPRA, into one Zimbabwe National Army proceeded. But, behind what eventually was revealed as a continuing charade, the ruthless accumulation of all power by Zanu (PF) proceeded apace.

BBC News Online Magazine, 50 office-speak phrases you love to hate.

"The latest that's stuck in my head is we are still optimistic things will feed through the sales and delivery pipeline (ie: we actually haven't sold anything to anyone yet but maybe we will one day)."

Would Australia's PM ban Botticelli? Germaine has a good 'ole go at Australia's Catholic PM.

Rudd would not recoil in horror from Botticelli's Birth of Venus, one hopes, but that, too, is the image of an adolescent. For some months, travellers on the London underground have been unable to escape the image of a naked pre-teen, fully lit and meticulously detailed down to her faint cloud of pubic fuzz. But no child protection campaigners have picketed the Royal Academy.

The Village Voice's annual Queer issues had lots of good stuff, including Triumph of the Lipstick Lesbians.

Today's middle-class and wealthy lesbians, however, look mainstream. "I've certainly noticed a more glamorous element among lesbians," said Julie Bolcer, the news editor of Go magazine, a monthly based in New York that is this group's bible. Bolcer can be seen many nights prowling hot-girl clubs for news tips. She's surprised by how many women wear long hair and how "flagrantly feminine" many of her peers dress.

21st Century ad from Heinz:



Quote of the week 1, from Radio 4's The Learning Curve:

"Up to 20% of school pupils could be classed as disabled under the Disability Discrimination Act".

Quote of the week 2, from Tim Footman's The gay priests row is a holy smokescreen:

"Let's be clear: removing all the gay priests from the Anglican communion would provoke a serious staffing shortage; although they're better off than the Roman Catholic church, which would probably cease to exist if all the Hail Marys had to find alternative employment."

Oh jeez! Not the sheep!

Dutch ad for free chocolate condom giveaway in equivalent of Radio Times. Very popular with Gene Robinson, apparently.